FIRST Minister Carwyn Jones will today MONpress the UK Government to give the Assembly new powers over renewable energy projects when he holds talks with Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and the leaders of the devolved administrations in London.

FIRST Minister Carwyn Jones will today press the UK Government to give the Assembly new powers over renewable energy projects when he holds talks with Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and the leaders of the devolved administrations in London.

Today’s meeting of the Joint Ministerial Council is also expected to focus on the impact that rising energy costs are having on businesses – and comes a day after Shadow Welsh Secretary Peter Hain launched a passionate attack on the effect that UK Government changes to the benefits system will have on vulnerable people across Wales.

Speaking ahead of the meeting, Mr Jones said: “There are tremendous prospects for low carbon energy investments in Wales and that is why I am determined that we have the right tools available to us maximise these opportunities. Meetings such as this are an opportunity for the Welsh Government to raise our concerns and fight for Wales’ interests.”

The First Minister has previously called on the UK Government to transfer to Welsh minister control the financial support system for renewable energy projects, and today’s meeting will explore the potential for reform of the electricity market.

Shadow Welsh Secretary Mr Hain used his Labour Party Conference speech in Cardiff yesterday sun to warn that hardship will increase for people who rely on benefits across Wales as a result of Conservative-Liberal Democrat policies. He also warned that the Government was in danger of repeating the economic disasters of the 1930s.

The Neath MP said Chancellor George Osborne had “squeezed the life out of Britain’s economy” and created a climate in which “everyone now expects things to get worse before they get better”.

Mr Hain admitted that the if Labour win at the next general election the financial situation means “some of the things we had hoped to be able to do will just have to wait”.

Warning that “capitalism has proved incapable of providing fair and efficient health services through market forces,” he defended government intervention in the economy and argued for a role which goes beyond stemming the “suicidal tendencies of the system”.

His attack on the Conservatives came before he urged activists at a fringe meeting to focus attention on Tory-Labour marginal seats. He argued that Welsh Labour had “marginalised” Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrats but that support for the Conservatives stood in the way of majorities at Westminster and in the Assembly.

Mr Hain also stressed the “absolutely crucial” importance of the Welsh Government delivering results and warned of the “disease” of adopting a managerial attitude and losing touch with supporters.

Describing the process that Labour had made, he said: “Just looking at Wales, we’ve had a massive advance after a period of Welsh Labour retreat. In 2007, in 2008 and in 2009 we did relatively worse than Labour in England and in Scotland – it’s hard to think about that now when we’ve been so successful in the last couple of years.

“We turned that around in 2010. We did better in the general election than we feared and was predicted and then we got our biggest ever win in the Welsh Assembly elections last year.”

But he added: “The Tory vote regained its kind of core strength in 2010 of round about a fifth of the electorate and has stayed solid since then and that’s something we should really think about very carefully.”

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Arguing that the Lib Dems and Plaid no longer posed the same threat as in recent years, he said: “We’ve increasingly marginalised the Lib Dems – well, they’ve marginalised themselves – and Plaid as well I think are drifting and are likely to do so as a result of this leadership contest outcome.

“In a sense what we’ve established over the last few years is to re-establish Labour as the leader of the progressive majority in Wales and that was not the case before 2012 certainly – we’d lost a lot of that support to particularly the Lib Dems and to Plaid.”

Stating that the party now had a chance to win former Plaid supporters, he said: “We’ve got something to offer them. With devolution, with the Welsh language, with a lot of other policies we’ve achieved as a Labour Party there isn’t really anywhere else for Plaid to go except independence.

“And that’s unpopular; it’s not going to win them anything.”

But he warned: “What that hasn’t done for us yet is enable us to win the key Tory-Labour marginals... Our performance in West Wales remains poor. Remember in 1997 – and we held it in 2001 – we won all of Pembrokeshire.

“And we won Clwyd West, and those are exactly the kind of Tory-Labour swing seats we need to win to win a comfortable majority in Westminster again and to get an absolute majority in the Assembly.

“With the rigging of the parliamentary boundaries against us, those seats become even more important.”

And warning of the dangers of losing touch with supporters while in power in Cardiff Bay, he said: “Carwyn and his team’s focus on delivery in this period of Welsh Government is absolutely crucial. We’ve been in power in Wales since 1999.

“We’ve got to be constantly on guard to make sure we don’t repeat the disease which afflicted us in Westminster which is the more you stay in power the more managerial you get and the more you lose touch with your supporters.”

Plaid AM Simon Thomas responded, saying: “This Labour conference has been dominated by negativity and attacking others. They are a party of Government yet act like the school bully.

“Carwyn Jones spent large parts of his speech attacking Plaid Cymru and other parties. Douglas Alexander spent his speech attacking the SNP, and now Peter Hain will spend most of today attacking independents and no doubt every other person who doesn’t happen to be Labour.

“Wales faces major economic and health challenges. We have an education system that isn’t delivering for our young people, yet rather than outline what the Government in Wales will do to overcome these challenges, the efforts of Labour’s politicians have gone in to attacking others.

“Wales deserves delivery from Labour, but gets more tribalism. While Labour cannot break their negativity, Plaid will continue to outline our proposals to make a nation a better place.”

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